The Holy Kiss

About the Book

Move over Clarice! Meet Detective Shantelle "Stevie" Sanchez who wonders why, at age 33, she's in Jersey City, why she's a cop, why the dream won't go away and why do men kill women? Another snag is the only man who doesn't repulse her is older, married and a computer cop. In a piercing psychological portrait, this obsessive detective probes the mind of a serial killer who has murdered four black women. They are discovered dangling "like sides of beef" in the 100-year-old subway tubes under the Hudson River. Each has a lip shape and cross burned into her torso. In a discordant mix of history, forensics, profiling, and betrayal, a Task Force works to solve the killings. Stevie impulsively places herself in peril by entering the menacing tunnels to find the killer. The "computer cop" who heads the Task Force overcomes a haunting fear of tunnels born in Viet Nam and follows her. In the subterranean dankness beneath Manhattan, they confront their own frailties as they face the killer's "Holy Kiss" of death in a taunt, tingling and unpredictable end game amidst the 600-volt "hot" rails.

Praise for The Holy Kiss

"After this book, I didn't take the subways for a month."
-Peter Golenbock, best-selling author of The Bronx Zoo.

"Characters so real, I began locking my doors."
-Psychologist Dr C. Ringold, Psy.D

"Convincing and engrossing from page one!"
Detective J. Vecchio, NYPD, Ret

About the Author

James Smiley Wightman, a former U.S. Marine, left the advertising agency he founded to write this book. He and artist wife Babs Reingold split their time between the New York area and St Petersburg, Florida.